Investigating the online and offline contexts of day-to-day democracy as participation spaces: newly published research by Ella Taylor-Smith and Colin Smith

Information, Communication and Society coverCongratulations to Centre for Social Informatics colleagues Dr Ella Taylor-Smith and Dr Colin Smith on the publication of their article ‘Investigating the online and offline contexts of day-to-day democracy as participation spaces’ in Information, Communication and Society.

The main theme of the article is citizen-led participation in democracy, and the online and offline spaces – introduced as ‘participation space’ – in which people work together to influence those in power, and to improve their communities. The findings draw upon a sociotechnical analysis of data from three case studies to expose the relationship between activities of local, grassroots democracy and the characteristics of the online and offline spaces in which it occurs. Continue reading

Congratulations Alicja Pawluczuk: best poster award at The Digital Human conference #digitalhumanities

Digital Human posterMany congratulations to Centre for Social Informatics research student Alicja Pawluczuk on winning the best poster award at the The Digital Human: Humanities and Social Sciences in the Digital Age conference hosted by Strathclyde University on 12th September.

The conference focused on the challenges and potential of interdisciplinary digital research. Alicja’s poster outlined the proposals for her doctoral study on youth digital participation and measuring the social impact of such work. For further information about the conference and Alicja’s contribution to the day check the post on her blog www.phdadventures.com.

The use of Actor-Network Theory and a Practice-Based approach to understand online community participation

Viva in progress

Viva in progress

My last work duty of 2012 has been to travel to the iSchool at the University of Sheffield to examine a PhD entitled The use of Actor-Network Theory and a Practice-Based Approach to understand online community participation. The viva went well and I’m pleased that the student will be awarded his PhD subject to minor corrections to the thesis. I was particularly interested in this work because it has parallels with my own doctoral study. In my work I analysed actor-networks that had developed around a knowledge management implementation within a large, distributed organisation to reveal the role of a corporate intranet in knowledge and information sharing.

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